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Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

We cosleep and, tho DS has pretty much sttn (HE sleeps, though I still wake up at least 1-2 times when he nurses) since 10 weeks adjusted, big exceptions have accompanied major motor milestones. So for sitting up at 6ish months and crawling at 9, he would actually wake for an hour or two at night practicing. And wow were there tears if we tried to get him to lie down instead! My DH and I have a routine of taking turns sitting up with him while he plays on those nights -- & we put a pillow and blanket on the rug in a babyproofed room, so that person can doze too. Now we're looking forward to the walking-waking to start any day... Anyhow, is your LO perhaps on the cusp of some new skill? I've heard this called "sleep regression"
Happy napping!

Kate

Mother to a sweet boy, born at 34 weeks on 2/11/11.
Proud that I grew 26 lbs of baby before solids, and still counting...

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

Originally Posted by @llli*lllmeg

I hate to mention this, as I think it is way over "diagnosed" but is there any possibility baby is having a sensitivity to something in your diet? Like dairy or wheat? These can cause sleep issues. Again, I don't find that kind of wakefullness is outside the norm but its something to consider. Ditto, forceful letdown?

Also what is the caregiver situation when you are at work? is baby being fed breastmilk or solids? How is he eating overall? Any chance they are being more adventurous with solid foods than you are willing to be yet? Is baby perhaps napping for long periods when you are at work? Some babies nurse lots more at night when mom works during the day because it is the time to recconnect, but also sometimes because they do not take the bottle well for the caregiver and are actually catching up on calories.

Thank you for all the great thoughts and suggestions!! We have tried Tylenol/ Motrin and it seems to make him happier when he has been fussy, but no effect on the sleeping thing. TO answer all of the above questions, I had to stop eating dairy at fourteen weeks because of dairy intolerance- my husband had the same problem when he was a babe- it made a world of difference, so I am already off the dairy! As for the caregivers- most days it is my husband, and I only work two days a week. We actually had trouble with him not napping well AT ALL for the sitter or my husband until recently. He take one long nap (2 hours) from 11:30-1:30, and a shorter one in the afternoon- maybe 45 minutes. He goes to bed anywhere between 7-8pm and gets up between 6-7am. Anyway, he gets only breast milk when I am at work right now, we will probably go to some food eventually, but I am wanting him to nurse right before eating right now since the milk is what he really needs, so the sitters just give him breast milk in bottles. He takes a decent amount of milk when I am at work, but like I said, only two days per week. I guess for now I will just consider it part of the normal- sounds like the 'normal' is a pretty wide range of things! This is hard the first time around- I have no idea what I am doing! Anyway, thanks for all of the thoughts- we will keep working on it! We will see how tonight goes- he was much happier in going to bed, so hopefully he might sleep a bit longer...... I wish that I could just stay home with him and then this wouldn't even matter! Wish our society was more geared towards fitting in with babies instead of making babies fit into our society!

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

I wish that I could just stay home with him and then this wouldn't even matter! Wish our society was more geared towards fitting in with babies instead of making babies fit into our society!

wow, its like you read my mind. I was not going to get into the whole CIO debate here, but I did write down my thoughts this morning and here is part of what I wrote: "Our society has changed. Our expectations of what mothers “should” be doing has changed. Thousands of years ago, people mostly all woke with the sun and went to bed with the sun. Virtually all mothers worked, (and how,) but they always had their babies & young children with them while they did so. Mothers slept beside their children-there was no other safe place for a baby to sleep! And mothers who were having difficulties had other women all around her to help, constantly.

I think CIO is another one of the many ways we try to make babies fit into the new realities of society. Yes, society has changed, the pressures and expectations on mothers has changed, and that change makes life harder in some ways (and of course, far, far easier in others, personally I have no desire to live as our cave dwelling ancestors did.) Society has changed, but babies and their needs have NOT changed, and I think that fact has to be respected."

I have no idea what I am doing!

yes you do. You are loving and caring for your baby and doing the best you can. That is all any of us know to do.

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

Originally Posted by @llli*lllmeg

I was not going to get into the whole CIO debate here, but I did write down my thoughts this morning and here is part of what I wrote: "Our society has changed. Our expectations of what mothers “should” be doing has changed. Thousands of years ago, people mostly all woke with the sun and went to bed with the sun. Virtually all mothers worked, (and how,) but they always had their babies & young children with them while they did so. Mothers slept beside their children-there was no other safe place for a baby to sleep! And mothers who were having difficulties had other women all around her to help, constantly.

Bowlby speculated that such a signaling system was adaptive during human evolutionary history because maintaining proximity to mothers protected infants from predators. Indeed, the infant cry as a means to maintain proximity with the mother may have a deep evolutionary history. As in human infants, physical separation from the mother evokes separation calls in a variety of mammalian infants, and the acoustic structure of the human infant cry is similar to that of the separation calls of nonhuman primate infants (Hofer 1996; Newman 1985; Newman & Symmes 1982; Panksepp 1998). Moreover, human mothers and infants exhibit a suite of adaptations that are typical of mammalian species that carry their infants, compared to species that tend to cache infants for long periods of time (Blurton-Jones 1972; Zeifman 2001). In caching species, infants are placed in nests or burrows while the mother forages, and feedings are infrequent. In these species, mother’s milk is high in fat and protein, infants have independent thermoregulatory mechanisms, and infants do not vocalize when separated. In contrast, in carrying species, including humans, mothers and infants are in more continuous contact and feedings are more frequent. In these species, milk is lower in fat and protein content, independent thermoregulation is poorly developed at birth, and infants do vocalize when separated from mothers.

The Behavioral Biology Lab at the University of Chicago has done some very interesting research on parenting, attachment, and infant development (among other social behaviors) in both humans and non-human primates. The lab has many of their publications available online. I also like the Zeifman paper cited in the paragraph above. From Zeifman:

There have long been reports by anthropologists that non-Western infants are quieter and more alert than their Western counterparts (Ainsworth, 1977; Brazelton, 1977; Konner, 1977). An examination of infant caregiving practices in these cultures suggests that an important cause of crying in modern, Western societies like our own may be caregiving practices that discourage physical closeness and frequent feeding, and effectively encourage parents to ignore crying. Infants in industrialized countries are carried only one third of their waking hours in the first 3 months (Lozoff & Brittenham, 1979) compared to 80 to 90% of the time in some nonindustrialized societies (Konner, 1976). Even when Western infants are breast-fed, mothers tend to maintain them on a feeding schedule of every 2 to 4 hr, similar to that of bottle-fed babies (Lozoff & Brittenham, 1979). Finally, when infants are placed in playpens and cribs rather than being carried or co-sleeping, caregivers cannot detect early and subtle discomfort cues like fussing and whimpering and respond to them, and full-blown crying is likely to result. Moreover, because crying is self-perpetuating, once it has begun in earnest it may be more difficult to arrest. Furthermore, unlike their non-Western counterparts, Westernized parents often purposely ignore crying (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972; Bernal, 1972), a practice that has historically been encouraged by some pediatricians (e.g., Spock, 1968) and one that usually escalates crying.

I certainly don't mean to disparage anyone else's parenting choices (everyone is free to do what they feel is best as far as I am concerned), but I found that a surprising number of family members pressured me to let my baby cry it out when he was about the same age as your baby (which I could never even consider doing) and it helped knowing that the instinct to respond to one's baby's cries is natural and deeply ingrained in the human behavioral system. At that time I was not able to cosleep because of a fairly severe injury, so I kept a crib next to the bed so that I could nurse him back to sleep as easily as possible.

Teething, stressors, and hitting milestones as others have mentioned all caused frequent night waking for us, but my son's sleeping did get better from about nine to twelve months when he started giving me as long as six hours of uninterrupted sleep! Of course his first set of molars started pushing through at twelve months, and I've had to let go of any expectation of long stretches of sleep. His gums are so swollen and red, and I personally feel that comfort is as important as nutrition to a baby, especially when a baby is experiencing pain like teething. He is sleeping longer stretches now that his top two molars have finally worked their way through.

I guess I don't have much useful advice. I just wanted to say that sleeping does get better with age, and I've found that it's far easier just to accept that I won't get much sleep and roll with it rather than trying to fight it. I also try to take quick naps as frequently as possible. Good luck!

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

I also didn't want to get into a debate about it as I think most parents makes choices, especially people here, after thinking about it. I think you could argue that CIO is part of evolution, since we are evolving as human beings, but anyway. What I want to know is, do all these people who site these other societies who don't let their babies ever cry actually know anyone from these places? My husband and I have a lot of friends from Africa and they all told us at like 5 months to stop feeding him at night. "Give him water in a bottle and let him cry, he'll stop waking up." We didn't follow their advice even though they are from the cultures often sited in these articles as an example to follow.

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

This is precisely why I was reluctant to post in this thread. I am not attacking mothers who cry it out. I state outright (please note the bolded portion):

Originally Posted by @llli*phi

I certainly don't mean to disparage anyone else's parenting choices (everyone is free to do what they feel is best as far as I am concerned), but I found that a surprising number of family members pressured me to let my baby cry it out when he was about the same age as your baby (which I could never even consider doing) and it helped knowing that the instinct to respond to one's baby's cries is natural and deeply ingrained in the human behavioral system.

Every mother must make parenting decisions that best suit her own family. However, there is a lot of pressure from family, friends, and doctors (fortunately not mine!) to let one's baby cry it out. I think that it is important for those of us who do not wish to employ this method to have support and resources advocating our decision to attend to our babies' needs day or night. Is the desire to provide this support really so offensive?

Originally Posted by @llli*mskalinin

I think you could argue that CIO is part of evolution, since we are evolving as human beings, but anyway.

As far as the evolution of human mother-infant interaction and the adaptive significance of crying, the infant cry as a means of maintaining maternal proximity is a deep homology within primates. The pattern of cry acoustics and maternal response behaviors across primates is clear, and I think that Soltis' conclusions on this particular topic are robust and generally accepted. Did you read his paper? It is quite good and is fairly comprehensive. He does discuss situations where reduced parental response may have a selective advantage. While he clearly favors the honest signaling hypothesis, Soltis also reviews hypotheses of crying as a manipulative signal and as a signal of vigor in this paper. Furthermore, Ronald Barr presents a paper on crying as a behavioral state in the response section. The set of papers in that first link are very thorough and provide multiple viewpoints on the function and evolutionary significance of early infant crying.

If you want to argue cry it out as a novel adaptation in human evolution then you need to describe the selective advantage of reduced maternal response to infant crying and tests for the existence of positive selection on this behavior. Providing examples of reduced maternal response to the normal infant crying spectrum in non-human "carrying species", as Soltis terms it, and the context in which this occurs would certainly provide evidence for this hypothesis as well.

Originally Posted by @llli*mskalinin

What I want to know is, do all these people who site these other societies who don't let their babies ever cry actually know anyone from these places? My husband and I have a lot of friends from Africa and they all told us at like 5 months to stop feeding him at night. "Give him water in a bottle and let him cry, he'll stop waking up." We didn't follow their advice even though they are from the cultures often sited in these articles as an example to follow.

Personally, my research interests are far, far removed from the behavioral sciences and anthropology in general (I actually find anthropology to be highly interpretive and often, but not always, far from robust). However, my understanding of sociological and anthropological research involves traveling to study locations and gathering data that pertain directly to the hypothesis that you are testing. The papers that I've sourced here deal solely with the origin and the function of early infant crying, and the discussions of cross-cultural behaviors in response to early infant crying only address this specific aspect of crying. Thus, I don't think it is fair to criticize the focus of these authors on only some of the aspects of maternal response in other cultures. Also, these authors are looking at general parenting trends, not a small subsample of families' particular parenting practices. Thus, certain parenting practices are not considered when they appear as statistical outliers.

Regardless of all this, I want to make it clear that I am not trying to vilify cry it out methods. I am merely trying to provide research from an evolutionary perspective that supports those of us who choose not to use these methods.

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

Interesting discussion... I actually appreciate the knowledgeable discussion and sharing of research- I find it interesting and stimulating rather than offensive or upsetting.. My midwife during my pregnancy recommended that I read _The Continuum Concept_ which was a difficult read due to how it was written, but contained many of the points brought up in this discussion about baby-wearing and feeding on-demand. It has been a goal of mine to try and do that, but I did not prepare myself for the colic that took 5 months to resolve- so I have needed to not carry him more than I expected, just so that i could get some mental breaks! But still, I have carried him a great deal of the time and he loves being in his sling now, watching me do dishes, weed the garden, etc. I find it really satisfying to know that my baby is right there, with me, watching and learning what I am doing....... I guess that deep down I knew that the sleeping thing is just something that I will deal with- because I love him and want to feed him if he wants to be fed... but I do love sleep, and that part of me that loves sleep has not given up the selfish indulgence yet!! I feel pressured, mainly by societal pressures, to be DOING something during the day. I do not feel right about lounging about and sleeping when he sleeps, but if I did that, him waking at night would nit even seem so unbearable. I do have the luxury of only working two days a week, and I CAN lounge about much of the time and sleep when he does. So I guess all this rambling is to say that I need to listen to my gut more, and listening to all of you has helped me to figure that out! Thanks! And I get that many of you didn't want to get into the CIO thing, but I am glad you did and glad that you gave me your opinions and information- I am one that definitely prefers more in the way of stimulating discussion.
I do not think that anyone who has had to follow the CIO method is a bad parent, quite the contrary, I think we are all for the most part doing the best we can with what we have, and somehow we all survived to adulthood and so will our kids!!! But I do appreciate everyone here, your honesty, your support, and your understanding. Through all of this, I am so thankful that my little boy has become such a joy, that he is happier now than sad, and that we made it through the colic and dairy allergy intact!! Sleep? Who needs it, right? Haha, but seriously, thanks.....

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

I didn't have time to read everything. People wrote but have you read The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley? It's really helping us so far. We .have the same problem DD cries whether she is in my arms or not. I highly recommend this book! http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth/

Re: Don't Want to CIO- but EXHAUSTED!!!

Originally Posted by @llli*mskalinin

I also didn't want to get into a debate about it as I think most parents makes choices, especially people here, after thinking about it. I think you could argue that CIO is part of evolution, since we are evolving as human beings, but anyway. What I want to know is, do all these people who site these other societies who don't let their babies ever cry actually know anyone from these places? My husband and I have a lot of friends from Africa and they all told us at like 5 months to stop feeding him at night. "Give him water in a bottle and let him cry, he'll stop waking up." We didn't follow their advice even though they are from the cultures often sited in these articles as an example to follow.

It depends in where from Africa they are. The ones for the cities have been Westernized and say stuff like this. The ones from the more rural areas still babywear and consider letting babies cry a form of child abuse. Yes, I know people from various African nations. Africa is a continent, but there are so many variants in culture there that IMHO, saying well African people do X is like trying to compare all Americans or all Europeans.